Building Better Products with Design Systems

Designs systems are an incredible tool for creating reusable, systemized, and cohesive designs for any application. Companies like Airbnb, Uber, and IBM have drastically revitalized the way they design products by utilizing the collection of reusable components and designs standards that change the pace of innovation and creation.

While many companies have brand guidelines and other documents that they consider “Design Systems”, these small collections of components or code snippets, they’re missing many of the elements that make Design Systems so powerful.

What is a design system

A design system is a collection of reusable UI components, code snippets, design guidelines, philosophies, and other digital assets guided by clear standards that help companies design and build products.

It’s a massive knowledge base that’s part UI and part documentation to help designers and developers become familiar with a companies digital design language.

Like a collection of lego blocks, a design system contains all the components necessary to put together an infinite number of UI designs. However, it’s more than just building blocks, it’s also the “why” of these UI elements that make this system such a fantastic tool.